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Amazon Launches One-Hour Delivery Service In Baltimore and Miami
schwit1 writes Amazon.com announced the launch Thursday of its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in select zip codes in Baltimore and Miami. It initially launched in Manhattan in December. The one-hour service, available to Amazon Prime subscribers through the Prime Now mobile app, costs $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free. From the article: "Amazon Prime's success has blown away the company's projections and 'petrified' local and national retailers, said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm headquartered in New York City. 'If you're a retailer and you're not scared of Amazon ... you should be,' he said. 'They are the change agent. They are leading the change in retail.'"
And the birth of the ultimate impulse buy
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
8 dollar to not wait one hour extra? Wow, that's a huge difference.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Or will Amazon offer to print your models and put them in your hands 2h later.
...is not that Amazon are offering same-day courier delivery - that concept is centuries old - but that the high street fails to provide an in-demand version of what used to make it unique: trained staff providing demonstrations and support on custom products and services, from meat to electronics.
I don't (didn't) go into local shops because they're cheaper, but because they are (were) better. Mind you, the local independent greengrocer - who is so resourceful with purchasing that they even pay local gardeners such as ourselves for the fruit of the dozen redcurrant bushes we have - also happens to be cheaper, as well as offering the rich flavours of fresh produce.
There was once a local independent electronics store run by someone who could fix any TV or telephone - and a short walk beyond that, a ham radio outlet full of half a century of gadgets, and he'd understand anything about anything at HF. A local computer store used to have an engineer who would build and sell co-processor cards in the back room. Going to any of these places was an education.
The hardware stores weren't staffed by snotty kids who just pointed at some Chinese junk on the shelf and shrugged if you asked them what was the best option, but people who were involved in building or carpentry or plumbing themselves, and who took joy in explaining how to operate some piece of kit - and, of course, if you weren't sure, you could pay them to do the work.
A retail job at places like this was a respectable career, not something you did because you failed at education or wanted something to get you through your undergrad studies. A customer wasn't someone you tried to fleece and then he'd fuck off disappointed but out of pocket, but someone who'd come back year after year.
So, I say it's not that Amazon has displaced the high street, but that the high street no longer delivers what it used to deliver. Is this because consumers have become lazy, compulsive and throwaway in their purchasing decisions? Probably partly. But the high street tried to chase the sell-quick-and-high starting in the '80s, and they've suffered terribly for it.
I'd rather live in a state where Amazon wasn't, have 2 day free shipping, and not have to pay sales tax.
They currently are offering this service to 25 ZIP codes - likely those directly surrounding a distribution center. However, there are several logistical factors that just seem to make this unworkable to scale:
1. If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift if the distribution center is 30 minutes away from me. That's the labor cost and vehicle cost for an entire day that my orders must pay for in "shipping".
2. 30 minutes one way trip is optimistic, I live in the 25th largest city, and it took me 80 minutes round trip just to go to a Radio Shack that had an item I needed in stock, 1/3 of the metro area away.
3. Even if there were distribution centers where every Walmart has a store in the US and they had a fleet the size of FedEx themselves (FedEx even just does a daily route), can they really keep the kind of items everywhere that I would order? Today, soldering iron tips, NiMH battery sub-c cells with solder tabs, replacement cherry mx keycaps, other days Loc-tite blue adhesive, 55" 4K TV, USB floppy drive, heat pump valve, that Spiderman comic from 1993...let alone that 80% of the items on Amazon are single-item-only things from marketplace sellers, very few of whom ship their entire inventory to Amazon for safe-keeping.
The challenges here are likely why they are thinking WAY out of the box, like delivery drones.
Do they sell pizza? They'd be quicker than our local Domino's!
Amazon Launches One-Year Delivery Service To Australia Wow, now thats an improvement..
I live in the UK and have cut down on Amazon for nearly 'everything'. I appreciate their efficiency, their systems and their prices but I don't want to live in a world where there's just one shop. That's the thing for everybody to be afraid of. They treat their staff pretty badly too.
With great power comes great responsibility, with late-stage capitalism comes winner takes all. I'm prepared to give up optimal pricing and some of the the rational economic man stuff for 'choice' and 'quality of life'.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
8 dollar to not wait one hour extra? Wow, that's a huge difference.
Might be but I can see cases where it might be worth it to some folks. Honestly pretty much anything I would get in my car to go get would take at least 30-60 minutes of my time + gasoline. In a place like Manhattan I could easily see it taking much longer than in the midwest suburbs where I live. My hourly wages are significantly higher than $8 and the opportunity cost to me and my company if I have to leave for an hour to go buy something could easily justify an $8 delivery charge if we needed it right away.
I buy a lot of stuff through Amazon (and other online vendors) precisely because of the opportunity cost to shop in person. Sometimes shopping is fun but most of the time it's just a chore plus it puts wear and tear on my car and takes up time I could put to better use.
1. If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift if the distribution center is 30 minutes away from me. That's the labor cost and vehicle cost for an entire day that my orders must pay for in "shipping".
Only if there are no other deliveries to be made anywhere near you.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Even though I do think brick and mortar stores should at least be aware of what Amazon is doing. The question still remains if Amazon can actually stop bleeding red and profit. Obviously Amazon is better on consumers and their obsessive need for instant gratification. Hoping to not only gain more buyers but also offer ways to circumvent delivery services like UPS and Fedex with their own in house means of delivery. If you look practically at Amazon's business model, they have some real issues in how they expect to make a profit. The advantage for Amazon of course if they can manage to streamline delivery and offer good prices is that they have less physical over head over a Walmart. The problem is, that State's are now implementing sales tax requirements and the online merchants may not be able to convince as easily consumers to buy merchandise online vs going to a store. WalMart offers, online sales, free shipping, pick up in stores, so Amazon has it work cut out trying to be a profitable retailer and also find ways to keep customers.
If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift if the distribution center is 30 minutes away from me.
Probably not true because the delivery person would probably batch several deliveries into a single run. In fact it would be seem to be economically insane to do otherwise. This only works in high population density locations (presumably) so you aren't likely to be the only person ordering stuff at a given time near your location. It would take some clever software and planning but it's doable. My undergrad degree is in industrial engineering and this is a pretty nifty operations research problem.
Even if there were distribution centers where every Walmart has a store in the US and they had a fleet the size of FedEx themselves (FedEx even just does a daily route), can they really keep the kind of items everywhere that I would order?
Of course not. It will necessarily be a limited menu so to speak. Same reason Walmart doesn't stock everything in their stores that you can buy through their website.
Amazon are single-item-only things from marketplace sellers, very few of whom ship their entire inventory to Amazon for safe-keeping.
I shop a lot through Amazon and only about 20% of what I buy comes from marketplace sellers and maybe 5-10% is stuff Amazon doesn't stock themselves. 90% of the time Prime delivery is an option. In any case this rapid delivery service will almost certainly be for stuff you buy from Amazon themselves only.
It's actually kind of a brilliant idea for the same reason that Walmart opening big stores in small towns is a great idea. If they can get there first and be the first to make it work at scale, it (potentially) takes a lot of the oxygen out of the room for competitors. The biggest threat to Amazon right now is companies like Walmart realizing that their stores can also serve as warehouses and getting their IT up to snuff. Amazon has been building warehouses all over the place to get ahead of this competitive threat. Amazon will have a hard time matching Walmart in small towns but with this Walmart might have a hard time matching Amazon in big cities.
1. If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift
A solution to this problem is to put more than one package on each truck, rather than sending out a separate truck and driver for each package. I am not sure if they thought of that, since it is a pretty deep concept.
can they really keep the kind of items everywhere that I would order? Today, soldering iron tips, NiMH battery sub-c cells ...
No. Amazon sells over 20 million items, but only about 10,000 are eligible for Prime-Now.
Always stay fresh. Make lots of money. Stop snitching.
If you have retail experience you will see that many people will come to the shop to try and then buy online.
People do this when your prices are higher than online or when they get no extra value from your "retail experience". People engage in showrooming at Best Buy precisely because their prices have historically sucked compared with online and the retail experience is nothing special. People shop at places like Bass Pro Shops because the retail experience is outstanding for their target audience. It adds value to the trip so people are willing to go out of their way to go there. People shop at Walmart almost entirely because the prices are low despite the fact that the shopping experience is widely acknowledged to suck. People shop at Nordstroms for exactly the opposite reasons - they know the prices are high but the service is generally excellent and that has a value to many people.
You can compete on price or you can differentiate yourself with added value in some way.
One counter is to sell your own products but that does not work in every sector.
Name one please. I can't think of one offhand where it couldn't work.
I'm kind of surprised they didn't buy into the radio shack storefronts to get every-town distribution locations - even if it's just a "pick up" site.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They are getting closer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ
Back when I was a caveman, (Ogg the Massive), if I felt peckish, whilst the missus scrubbed the cave and Ogg the Minor made hand prints on the walls upsetting said missus, I popped out to the plains and grabbed a few oranges from the bush. This took approximately 3 of what you modern humans call minutes. If I wanted a spear, I popped out again, grabbed a branch from the tree, broke the twigs off and sharpened the end using a nearby piece of flint. Ogg's your Uncle, instant satisfaction, and if a gazelle was passing by, the ability to enjoy the odd steak - all within about an hour of initial pangs! As I was saying, nothing changes. Amazon have just returned things to normal, cutting out the annoying environmental disaster that is to have to get in a car and pollute the environment all for a USB cable. One truck, many customers is better than many customers in lots of cars! And drones will make the process even more efficient. #ScTcObRbK #tt_ScTcObRbK
I don't live far from Baltimore. I guess if I need a rush package, I could order something, ship it to a known address, and drive there to pick it up. Only problem is they might beat me there.
A good way to order pizza!
Retail is dead anyway, but the brainless corpse hasn't quite gotten the message yet.
I miss the day of the independent hardware store, grocer, pharmacy, camera shop,hi-fi store, etc. The first wave of crushing those small businesses came in the 70's - 80's in the form of malls. Many independents went to the malls and survived. Those who refused, well -- I've seen entire city blocks of shops and cinemas close due to the malls. (Santurce, Puerto Rico, for example, lost I'd say over 90% of its cinemas and retail stores, all due to one mall.)
During the 90's big-box retailers such as Target, Walmart, etc. came and shredded what was left. Now malls are populated by franchise chains, not independents - and the malls themselves are a dying breed in the US.
So what do I think of Amazon and other e-tailers? I love it. Shopping for some things such as shoes and clothing can be a bit difficult, but for other goods such as music, blurays, books, parts, etc -- I don't even bother going to a mall, what with the crowds and stupid, ignorant sales staff. With Prime and a few dollars i have to wait only a day. Surely I can do that! Maybe not 20 years ago, but now I have the patience.
For some of my fringe hobbies I go out of my way to support the small businesses. Like Marshall Street for disc golf, for example - they're a little store in Massachusetts. Or Airline Museum for aircraft die-casts. Or RightStuf for anime. It's not all about Amazon, one can (and should!) give business to small online shops who deserve it!
Amazon is revenge on the big-box stores for wiping out small-time merchants. I don't think it set out to be that, but every time I see a walmart close I grin a little. I resented it when they popped up, and now I don't mind seeing them go.
I've even bought a few appliances from Amazon, without showrooming. Careful reading of descriptions and in-depth studying of reviews help to offset losing the ability to hold the object in your hand prior to purchase. So far I'm happy with my online appliance purchases.
It would be deliciously ironic if there's a renaissance of the small independent shop away from a mall. I'd love to see that. But then I'd love to see things made in the country of purchase again (USA for me) but that's, for now, just a dream.
Retail is dead, it shot itself in the head years ago. Good riddance.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I live in the UK and have cut down on Amazon for nearly 'everything'. I appreciate their efficiency, their systems and their prices but I don't want to live in a world where there's just one shop.
That's highly unlikely. Furthermore you might have that backwards. Think of it like this. Amazon is forcing lots of other companies, big and small, to step their game up with regards to online shopping which is almost entirely to your benefit. I assure you that Walmart and Target and other retailers have no interest in going out of business so shop where it makes sense for you and if the others eventually catch up then switch to them. Think of it like tough love for companies that haven't thought hard enough about how to deliver value to you.
That's the thing for everybody to be afraid of.
Doesn't worry me a bit. The odds of Amazon becoming a monopoly are vanishingly small. See below.
With great power comes great responsibility, with late-stage capitalism comes winner takes all.
That's demonstrably not true in lots of industries, particularly in retail. The retail sector in the US is about $4.5 Trillion. Walmart is the largest and most dominant of these had US sales of $337 Billion last year which is about 7.5% of the market. Amazon had revenue of about $89 Billion over the same period. There is nobody that is even close to becoming a monopoly and none likely to do so any time soon. Plenty of competition out there.
I do not understand how paying someone to drive something in 30 minutes to your location makes them any money on the sale. Unless your paying 30 for the drivers time and the vehicle/fuel/insurance in your purchase somehow. Its not magic they still have to make money or they too will go out of business in this race to the bottom.
UPS does it by bundling a whole days worth of stuff in a truck and creating an optimized route via server software for that purpose then giving it to the driver. How is Amazon going to do this 30 minutes at a pop in say SF or Boston traffic down town. Drones do not do it, and they wont do it in the rain/wind/snow. Even if Drones somehow become cost effective and not a hype for stock purchasers.
Even though I do think brick and mortar stores should at least be aware of what Amazon is doing.
I assure you that they are acutely aware of what Amazon is doing.
The question still remains if Amazon can actually stop bleeding red and profit.
Amazon could be profitable tomorrow if they chose to be. You only have to look through their financial statements to show that. They reinvest heavily in growing the company and in some pretty speculative projects (Fire Phone) and as long as Bezos is CEO I don't see that changing. And honestly I think that is a good plan at least in principle - and so far the execution has been good. The biggest danger to Amazon is if a company like Walmart figures out a way to use their thousands of existing stores as warehouses in addition to being stores AND get people to think of them for online purchases.
Obviously Amazon is better on consumers and their obsessive need for instant gratification.
Umm, not so much. For most of Amazon's customer base there is at minimum a 24 hour delay before receiving any purchases. I can wander down to my local Walmart in about 15 minutes if I want "instant" gratification.
The advantage for Amazon of course if they can manage to streamline delivery and offer good prices is that they have less physical over head over a Walmart.
That's not really as true as you might think. That's something of a myth left over from the early days of Amazon. Amazon has been busy building warehouses all over the place to facilitate efficient and fast delivery and these incur substantially the same costs as brick and mortar stores. They are doing this so that Walmart and the rest don't steal a march on them and use their stores as warehouses. Remember that your local Walmart is almost certainly closer to you than your nearest Amazon warehouse so this means that Walmart could in theory be able to deliver products quite rapidly if they work out the system for doing so and they are among the best at logistics in the world.
The problem is, that State's are now implementing sales tax requirements and the online merchants may not be able to convince as easily consumers to buy merchandise online vs going to a store.
Again Amazon is actually supporting collection of sales tax now. They believe it actually works in their favor and they are probably right. The sales tax on internet sales was all but inevitable so Amazon is getting ahead of the problem early.
Am I the only wondering if Jeff Bezos was a science fiction fan? Robert Heinlein basically predicted an Amazon-like behemoth that did everything for everyone, called General Services. Granted, the book portrays them as less "product" and more "service," but the idea is very similar!
General Services got its start as a dog walking company, and grew from there. (Books anyone?) As a result of its humble beginnings, General Service's 's tag line is "We Also Walk Dogs." Really awesome read. I came across it in a compilation called "The Green Hills of Earth," which is chock full of other really nice little stories. And for those of you who have only read Heinlein's novels, I found the short stories a really refreshing read.
How can Amazon do this? Prime shipping alone, has got to be costing them a fortune in profits. Now "free" two hour delivery?
This retailer isn't scared. Just waiting for the bubble to burst. Amazon can't bleed money forever. Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost.
I don't respond to AC's.
Technology changes are making the mega-city areas more desirable. Is rural America going to be slowly boarded up?
Given the wholesale changes since 2000, it is easy to see that the mega-suppliers/dealers, Amazon, Walmart, drug dealers, etc, are only efficiently available in the denser areas, but now the (Un)Affordable Care Act is decimating smaller town hospitals along with the increasing difficulty of making small retail businesses profitable given everything from increasing regulations, taxes and lack of (easily) repairable products. UPS & Fedex for small towns are the only saving grace.
The only given is change, and cities have been abandoned before the time of Christ.
Today, technology is the mover and shaker, but will it reinvigorate the small town?
These drones are going to have to be manually piloted for a long time before they get approval for automated drones. The logistical problems with a machine that has to place a package on your front porch are pretty significant - Amazon would have to map all the porches of all its customers. So until then if you want a great, albiet boring job, get your pilot's license now before the rush.
They currently are offering this service to 25 ZIP codes - likely those directly surrounding a distribution center. However, there are several logistical factors that just seem to make this unworkable to scale
It's always been Amazon's stratergy to take a loss when entering a new market. They'll do that here too.
soylentnews.org
I live very close to the Baltimore distribution center. What they've done there is position it right in the middle of where all the major highways here intersect. You really can get to any other part of Baltimore in 25 minutes from there. I suspect they're going to limit this service to popular items in cities where the layout makes things feasible.
You're a business and a part breaks. That's why you have maintenance contracts.
Think of Amazon 1-hour as your maintenance contract, except not one one that leeches operating funds off of you every fucking month while the maintenance guy does nothing. Why hire a person to keep track of your supplies, when Amazon 1-hour can be your supply cabinet and you can stop tying up operating revenue with a stock room? Why spend all your time as a party coordinator when you can press a button on your phone and go enjoy your own party?
If you're a maintenance guy, or a paid planner, or a stockroom attendant then Amazon is going to make you go get another job. Maybe it's time to go figure out how to make a nice espresso and become a barista somewhere. Better yet, learn to fix plumbing and make a real living. You can even use Amazon to deliver a replacement part so you can install it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Once Amazon Fresh moves their delivery model to Prime Now and this goes main stream at those delivery prices, I will never need to leave the house. How are they doing this without drones or autonomous delivery minions?
My Robot Avatar will then go to work instead of me; I can sit at home and watch TV,
eat potato chips (delivered by courier), and get Fat. I die at age 30 of obesity and
diabetes. This is good because a growing, young population is good for business.
I haven't figured out, though, if my Avatar will do the sex thing for me.
Beast starving patriots. Shop there more.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
One-hour delivery in Miami will be a good trick, considering that it can take an hour -- at 2pm or 9pm, let alone 6pm -- just to get from one side of 836 or the Palmetto Expressway to the other.
Miami doesn't have a road network... it has a random collection of point-to-point access routes that fan out like binary trees for the final half-mile beyond some hopeless traffic chokepoint at both ends. Other cities have gridlock in old urban neighborhoods. Miami has hopeless gridlock in brand new neighborhoods whose concrete has barely finished curing.
A few years ago, Miami's Metrorail had record-setting ridership. Miami-Dade Transit Authority responded by cutting back service. Meanwhile, the half-cent sales tax that was sold to voters with promises of building hundreds of miles of new Metrorail track gets pissed away on lighted street signs and... well, nobody knows what else.
And it's totally fair to blame Dade County's incompetent government for it. Broward County to the north is far from perfect, but in most places, the gridlock basically evaporates the moment you cross the county line (and conversely, backs up southbound into Broward as if the county line were a long traffic light.
In Miami, that would be somewhere near State Road 836 and the Palmetto Expressway... both of which are surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional arterial roads in the world (even if the new 826-836 interchange itself is pretty sweet).
Golden Glades? (ROTFLMAO, pounding the floor and gasping for breath).
Turnpike @ 836? Maybe if they bought the FHP office & got their private on/off ramps in the deal. Via 107th Avenue? HAHAHHAHA. That's a good one.
Dadeland? Anywhere near I-95? You can't be serious. Every square inch of this miserable county -- beach to everglades, Homestead to Aventura -- is gridlocked for most of the day.